Which is exactly my point. This type of thinking and the gameplay surrounding it is a completely different genre than what original MMORPGs were. If you think taking 1-2 hours to do a dungeon or get 1 upgrade a week was "bad" or "hardcore" then you must not have ever played the older games that created this genre. And, it's not a matter of it being "broken," "harcore," or whatever. WoW is simply a part of a different genre now that is not an MMORPG.

I don't classify WoW as a true MMORPG anymore, it's simply a MMO game. Comparing WoW to a true MMORPG is like comparing an apple to a socket wrench.

I never thought of WoW as a true MMORPG for the same reason you were getting at, but it has degraded. My first MMO was Ultima Online and you could become a Master Fisherman and be successful that way, it was a true MMORPG to me and WoW was never that evolved.

The only other one I've heard about was the first Star Wars MMO before that awful patch, I've never played that one, however I heard it was pretty detailed in terms of character progression beyond the ole exp via quest/kill grind.

But I think if the only way you can progress is through battle and conflict, it's not a real MMORPG, because if your only choice(fight to succeed) is the same as everyone elses, what role are you playing?

At my high school, they were handing pretty much all kind of food at my cafeteria. Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Poutine (in Quebec of course). Then, a law went in saying that high school had to sell only healthy food to their students. So when I was about to leave, the new food went in. The new people in high school didn't mind it, as it was the 1st time they took a meal at my school. For them it was normal and they enjoyed it. However, people like me didn't like it, as it wasn't what we'd been used to (and honestly hamburgers DID taste better than those weird vegetables... did they?!)

Now, my goal isn't to start a debate about healthy food, but to use it as a bridge with what's happening with WoW. The new generation of gamers, the one WoW is actually aiming for, are the kids that grew up with CoD, Facebook and instant gratification. As the old fashioned RPG market is old and the players playing it continually shrink (like people who knew hamburgers at my high school eventually all went to college or found a job), Blizzard didn't have the choice. If they wanted (and still want) to stay competitive on the market, they had to change their philosophy.

So, does WoW have a generation problem? Of course. In 9 years, people who started playing WoW back then were either old school gamer (NES/SNES) or N64 ones. Now, 9 years later, they have people from the PS3, Xbox 360, Facebook, iPhone and much more into the gadget industry. You said in your intro that it was what was going on with all MMOs. No, it's what going on globally on the planet, with our resources and our constant growth.

I don't think its a generational thing at all. WOW became a house hold name and has revolutionized the genre because it catered to a more casual audience. True, vanilla WOW had some grinds that were relatively painful compared to what we have today, but it was carebears compared to the prominent MMOs before it. Everything about it was faster and far more friendly. All Blizzard has really done is continue down that evolutionary path of creating an MMO that is able to appeal to all types of gamers.

And there's no one replacing us. As we age and move on, the next generation just doesn't want to grind. Why pay $15/month on top of the standard game cost when you can play with your friends for just the price of the disc?

Why go through 36+ hours of mind numbing leveling, with no challenge, no excitement, when you can hop into CoD multiplayer on day 1?

While other genres are expanding to try to reach new people and markets, the MMO market is shrinking. Fewer and fewer people are willing to put forth the hours, dedication, and coordination required to "have fun."

My take on WoW's decline - it's not just WoW. It's all MMOs. And it's no one's fault.

It's actually blizzard's fault.

They're trying to cater to these kids who don't want to play MMOs while abandoning their "good" generation with these casual ideals that aren't really fun for us.

In short, no one wins cuz Blizz caters to an invisible audience and alienates their current playerbase.

And there's no one replacing us. As we age and move on, the next generation just doesn't want to grind. Why pay $15/month on top of the standard game cost when you can play with your friends for just the price of the disc?

Why go through 36+ hours of mind numbing leveling, with no challenge, no excitement, when you can hop into CoD multiplayer on day 1?

While other genres are expanding to try to reach new people and markets, the MMO market is shrinking. Fewer and fewer people are willing to put forth the hours, dedication, and coordination required to "have fun."

My take on WoW's decline - it's not just WoW. It's all MMOs. And it's no one's fault.

I'm part of the "MMO gamer generation," and I still think grinding and subscription fees and all that jazz is fucking stupid and needs to die in a white-hot fire.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

Can you really blame them? If I were to go get a game right now and I had to choose between WoW, something that had a monthly fee + you had to grind for ~40 hours before you can even begin to have any fun, versus a game that's $60 that I can put into a console or PC and immediately have fun with, that doesn't have a monthly fee, I'd go with that one.

The only reason I played WoW is because I had friends that did, if I didn't have friends that played I'd never have started. The game is good, but the time investment is too great for most people, and I can't really fault them for that. It is a massive investment. Leveling isn't fun, and grinding BGs/Heroics to get gear to raid or seriously PvP isn't fun either.

Games like DotA have a massive learning curve, and it takes countless games to get good, but even if you're not the greatest you can still have fun with it. There's virtually nothing fun about grinding levels or gear in WoW. The fun parts of WoW are arenas, raids, etc. things that require you to already have gear. And with how old WoW is, it's an even bigger investment.

When WoW first came out there were 60 levels. The highest PvP was world PvP and then they added BGs, which you could do with just about any gear. Of course raid gear was better, but any gear worked more or less. As far as PvE yes there were raids, but gearing up in 5 mans was actually challenging too. You had to find 4 other people and head to the instance. It was a lot of work to hit 60, but once you were there you could immediately jump into challenging and fun content.

Now there's 90 levels, and yes leveling is faster but 1-60 in vanilla is far faster than 1-90 now. On top of that, once you hit 90 you still have to grind out gear to get to the difficult parts. There's no difficulty in heroics, none, at all. You literally hit the "Find Group" button and faceroll and hope gear drops for you. There's no difficulty in PvP because it's entirely gear dependent in BGs, if you get targeted and you don't have good gear you die. End of discussion.

It's just become an even bigger time investment, and there's a lot of other games you could pick up and play that aren't a massive time sink.

Funny that 36 hours is considered a lot. Used to take well over a hundred hours for a new player to reach cap.

It still does. A new player who has an mmo background might be able to get a toon to level cap that quickly, but I doubt that is commonplace. People forget how much they had to learn when they first started playing this game...the average new player I know takes a few months to get to level cap.

Most modern people in western culture learn that to achieve success, it is essential to build

1. Confidence
2. Attitude

This teaching is WRONG. Success comes from self-discipline.

You can easily identify the people who will be successful in life by separating them into these two camps:

1. The ones showing you confidence and attitude
2. The ones with self-discipline

But let's take a closer look at the latter. Why is self-discipline such an advantage over confidence and attitude? The reason is because self-discipline vastly increases the odds you will be able to slog through seemlingly endless boring hours of study to get awesome grades in high school, slog thru rough courses in college, earn a degree, work hard to achieve a great paying job.

In short, self-discipline enables people to GRIND life. And grinding life = success.

So when you say that "grinding is retarded", you have pretty much missed the ENTIRE POINT of life.

Most modern people in western culture learn that to achieve success, it is essential to build

1. Confidence
2. Attitude

This teaching is WRONG. Success comes from self-discipline.

You can easily identify the people who will be successful in life by separating them into these two camps:

1. The ones showing you confidence and attitude
2. The ones with self-discipline

But let's take a closer look at the latter. Why is self-discipline such an advantage over confidence and attitude? The reason is because self-discipline vastly increases the odds you will be able to slog through seemlingly endless boring hours of study to get awesome grades in high school, slog thru rough courses in college, earn a degree, work hard to achieve a great paying job.

In short, self-discipline enables people to GRIND life. And grinding life = success.

So when you say that "grinding is retarded", you have pretty much missed the ENTIRE POINT of life.

Self-discipline to me means that you play a computer game a few hours here and there and when it's not fun, you stop. A gamer grinding for 12 hours of mindless tedium to get a +2 weapon is kind of the opposite of self discipline.

That you would somehow try to connect investing countless hours of boredom in a computer game in order to achieve a meaningless virtual reward as an example of self discipline is odd to say the least.

Self-discipline to me means that you play a computer game a few hours here and there and when it's not fun, you stop. A gamer grinding for 12 hours of mindless tedium to get a +2 weapon is kind of the opposite of self discipline.

That you would somehow try to connect investing countless hours of boredom in a computer game in order to achieve a meaningless virtual reward as an example of self discipline is odd to say the least.

Its not odd. Its exactly the function, and advantage, of self-discipline.

The successful people in this world are basically...boring. They have an ability to grind out mind-numbing tasks, don't get out much, don't party much, and that's it.

One example is NFL head coach Joe Gibbs. The guy was wildly successful. He also didn't have a life. He lived in his office. He set up a sleeping cot and would catch a few zzz's, then get right up and grind more gamefilm. Won 3 super bowls.

Joe Gibbs was an incredible self-disciplined person. He also was very boring. That is success.

Its not odd. Its exactly the function, and advantage, of self-discipline.

The successful people in this world are basically...boring. They have an ability to grind out mind-numbing tasks, don't get out much, don't party much, and that's it.

One example is NFL head coach Joe Gibbs. The guy was wildly successful. He also didn't have a life. He lived in his office. He set up a sleeping cot and would catch a few zzz's, then get right up and grind more gamefilm. Won 3 super bowls.

Joe Gibbs was an incredible self-disciplined person. He also was very boring. That is success.

You're seriously comparing winning a Super Bowl to getting a new shiny in a MMO?

Self discipline is only playing a game for an hour or two, and then going to sleep to get a good night's rest before work/classes tomorrow.

Staying up late camping a rare mob for that must have +3 ring in a meaningless virtual game is the opposite of self discipline.

The fact that you're constantly equating success in a MMO to real life success is pretty sad.

Self-discipline to me means that you play a computer game a few hours here and there and when it's not fun, you stop. A gamer grinding for 12 hours of mindless tedium to get a +2 weapon is kind of the opposite of self discipline.

That's a great definition. Fun is different things to different people though. Some folks enjoy playing this game 1 hour a week, some 50.

What we're seeing here is demands of folks that the game no longer be time consuming in most / all aspects, rather than just realizing that they're no longer a candidate for playing an MMO.

But hey, Blizzard certainly seems to listen.

"Look around you. We're all liars here, and every one of us is better than you" - PB

Can you really blame them? If I were to go get a game right now and I had to choose between WoW, something that had a monthly fee + you had to grind for ~40 hours before you can even begin to have any fun, versus a game that's $60 that I can put into a console or PC and immediately have fun with, that doesn't have a monthly fee, I'd go with that one.

And I would bet every dollar of that 60 bucks that you would stop playing the other game before you would have stopped playing WoW, so how much entertainment you get for your money is pretty subjective when trying to compare an MMO to a non MMO.

When WoW first came out there were 60 levels. The highest PvP was world PvP and then they added BGs, which you could do with just about any gear. Of course raid gear was better, but any gear worked more or less. As far as PvE yes there were raids, but gearing up in 5 mans was actually challenging too. You had to find 4 other people and head to the instance. It was a lot of work to hit 60, but once you were there you could immediately jump into challenging and fun content.

Now there's 90 levels, and yes leveling is faster but 1-60 in vanilla is far faster than 1-90 now. On top of that, once you hit 90 you still have to grind out gear to get to the difficult parts. There's no difficulty in heroics, none, at all. You literally hit the "Find Group" button and faceroll and hope gear drops for you. There's no difficulty in PvP because it's entirely gear dependent in BGs, if you get targeted and you don't have good gear you die. End of discussion.

And yet when Cataclysm made heroics and the gearing process difficult again, they were almost universally criticized for making the game too hard and thus we were returned to the facerolling times from Wrath.

Kids these days... just not into what they were in the past. The notion of "working for your fun" is just unreal to them.

What a load of bull. I AM working for my fun, I do it 8 hours a day at work, making money so that I can come home and have fun. You know what, you are right, it might actually be a generational problem, unlike a generation of basement dweller gamers, kids today actually have work to do OUTSIDE of the game, which is something you seem unable to grasp.

---------- Post added 2013-03-23 at 09:43 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Siaer

And I would bet every dollar of that 60 bucks that you would stop playing the other game before you would have stopped playing WoW, so how much entertainment you get for your money is pretty subjective when trying to compare an MMO to a non MMO.

But how many hours of the countless grind you spend in WoW are actually ENTERTAINING? I'd much rather play a game for 8 hours and have 8 hours of fun, than play a game for 200 hours and have 10 hours of fun.

I don't see WoW in a decline right now. When it hits 2 million subscribers is when I'll think that.
You must not forget that there are millions of players out there that play and grind and don't gripe on the forums because they love the game.
People you see bitching on the forums are the minority.

I don't see WoW in a decline right now. When it hits 2 million subscribers is when I'll think that.
You must not forget that there are millions of players out there that play and grind and don't gripe on the forums because they love the game.
People you see bitching on the forums are the minority.

Most people can't handle change. At some point change outpaces them and they start seeing everything "in decline". Any person at any age throughout history would always tell you how things were totally better before and how everything goes to shit with new generation. What's funny is that if you point it out to them, they would scream how THIS TIME IT'S TOTALLY DIFFERENT!